I'm in the middle of a fall food frenzy! I'm feeling like I have to make the most of the short-lived season, and the bounty of all of my favorite foods, which is of course leading to a lot of time in the kitchen. I baked these bars for a breakfast that I hosted at my apartment last weekend. I got the idea from Lottie & Doof, who went so far as to name these sweet little things "breakfast bars" since they are stuffed full of fruit and oats. I then switched it up a bit by trading out the regular oats for steel-cut oats, and replacing half the raspberries with cranberries. It worked out.

Cranberries are a treat that we don't often get in Germany. In fact, cranberry juice, which is so prevalent in the U.S. (where would college girls be without their vodka cranberries?) is considered more of a medicine than a food, and can be purchased at the pharmacy. Germans do have the Johannisbeer(currant), which reminds me a lot of the cranberry, but as with most things that "remind me of" a particular food product native to American, it's not exactly the same.

Luckily, when fall comes around, most German supermarkets stock a (limited) supply of typical Thanksgiving foods, no doubt to appease the growing numbers of Americans and Canadians calling Germany home. I make sure to snap up an extra supply of cranberries, stashing in the freezer those that I don't use for my Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. These bars used up one of my last bags of cranberries from the freezer stock. Good thing it's the perfect time of year to replenish the supply.

Besides subbing out half the raspberries for cranberries, I also used quick cooking steel-cut oats instead of rolled oats. I just wanted to see how they would work, so you can definitely go back to the original recipe and use rolled oats instead. But the steel-cut oats were pretty delicious, and gave the bars a good chew. I'm not even really sure if steel-cut oats can be found in Germany. Maybe in a bio store?

Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/175°C.2. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. 3. Put the flour, brown sugar, oats, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until combined. Add the butter and pulse until loose crumbs form.4. Reserve 1 1/4 cup of the mixture and set aside. Pour the rest of the mixture into the prepared pan and use your hands or the back of a large wooden spoon to push the crust into an even layer at the bottom of the pan. 5. Bake until golden brown, 15 minutes.6. While the crust is cooling, keep the oven on, and make the cran-raspberry filling.7. In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon and flour together. Add the raspberries, cranberries, lemon juice and butter, mixing gently until the berries are evenly coated.8. Spread the cran-raspberry filling evenly on top of the cooled crust. Sprinkle the reserved crust mixture evenly on top of the filling.9. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the filling starts to bubble around the edges.